Head of Crimea calls Mejilis of Crimean Tatar people semi-criminal clannish structure

April 22, 18:38UTC+3SIMFEROPOLOn April 13, Crimea’s Prosecutor passed a decision to stop the Mejilis activities in compliance with articles 9 and 10 of the federal law "On Counteracting Extremist Activities"

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Sergey Aksyonov

SIMFEROPOL, April 22 /TASS/. The Mejilis of Crimean Tatar people was a semi-criminal clannish structure, which tried to destroy peace in Crimea, for years, Sergey Aksyonov, the head of Crimea, told TASS on Friday.

"The Mejilis has never been a ‘democratic institution’ as Mr. [John] Kirby [the US State Department spokesman - TASS] has called it. It has always been, including the years of Ukraine’s annexation of Crimea, a very closed, clannish and semi-criminal structure, which serviced political and commercial interests of a narrow circle of individuals," Aksyonov said in response to the US State Department’s calls to life a ban on the Mejilis activities on the peninsula.

"It is not by accident that this ‘democratic institution’ stubbornly refused to get officially registered demonstrably violating the law, including Ukrainian laws. The Mejilis tried to destroy peace and inter-ethnic accord in Crimea for almost 25 years," Aksyonov said.

He described as lies the allegations of Mejilis representatives that they defended the interests of Crimean Tatars. "All their words about protecting the rights of the Crimean Tatar people are the same brazen lie as the words of US officials about the protection of democracy," Aksyonov added.

"The American masters are trying to save their project, which they call a ‘democratic institution’. But all this has got nothing to do with democracy. What does it consist in? Does it consist in the imposition of a blockade on the peninsula what the Mejilis is doing with support from the Kiev government in order to deprive the Crimean inhabitants of water and electricity and starve them to death? Does it manifest itself in attempts to intimidate the peninsula’s population or in political blackmail of the authorities? The Mejilis has been doing that for decades. And what about calls to instigate a war in Crimea? Is it also democracy?" Aksyonov asked.

He added that no attempts of Mejilis representatives to harm the people of Crimea had crowned with success.

On April 13, Crimea’s Prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya passed a decision to stop the Mejilis activities in compliance with articles 9 and 10 of the federal law "On Counteracting Extremist Activities".

On February 15, 2016, Poklonskaya filed a lawsuit urging the court to recognize the activities of the Mejilis of the Crimean Tatar people as extremist.

The Russian Justice Ministry included the Mejilis of the Crimean Tatar people in a list of organizations whose activities had been suspended because of their extremist nature on April 18.

The collegium of Crimea’s Supreme Court will get down to studying documents proving the extremist activities of the Mejilis of the Crimean Tatar people on April 25. The materials of the case contain more than 600 pages of evidence proving the Mejilis’ destructive activities.